Independent Research Presentations

This was never posted. #TBT

Community Members, Family, and Friends are invited to attend the 8th grade Independent Research Project Presentations on Wednesday, May 27th, Small Middle School in room 112.

Presentations will began at 8:45am and run until 10:45am followed by an Awards Ceremony.

Student Research topics include: Native Bee Homes on Small Campus, AISD LEED Certification, Water Conservation within AISD, Chicken Tractor Design, Cobb Oven Design, Goat Camera Installation, Rain Garden Installation, Small Cafeteria Improvements, Art and the Environment, Community Garden Installation, Pollinator Gardens, Increasing Native Birds on campus, Mice Control Study on campus and many more!

Your support for our students is greatly appreciated. Hope to see you there!

Please welcome our new flock! With the help of wonderful volunteers, we built a new chicken palace last spring that has allowed us to triple the number of hens we can keep.  That means triple the number of eggs this spring.  Be sure to sign up for our Chicken Club and receive dozens of fresh, organic blue-green eggs from our Americauna hens.

Spring Plant Sale and Funky Chicken Coop Tour

The Spring Plant Sale dates have been set! 

This year we will be having a 3 day event over 2 weeks! The first week the sale is on Thursday April 10 and Friday April 11 during the school day from 9 am to 5 pm. This will allow us to have a large number of student volunteers and will accommodate attendants' varying schedules. The second week the plant sale will be on Saturday April 19 from 10 am to 4 pm. We are attempting to test out which arrangement of dates and days will help raise more fund for the Green Academy. As always we will be selling native Texas plants, herbs, and vegetables that have been propagated by students and donated generously Emerald Garden Nursery. (http://www.pondsandgarden.com/)

 Plant sizes range from 4 inch pots to 5 gallons. Prices start at $3 and go up to $50.
Students will be available to give tours of our extensive gardens. If you see it growing on our campus, there's a good chance we will have it for sale.
Don't forget to buy a t-shirt or two!

Here are list of the plants we usually carry. We can get many others and usually will have many more. 


Texas Red Bud
Mexican Plum
Fragrant Mimosa (in bloom)
Possumhaw
Yaupon Holly
Wax Myrtle
Anacacho Orchid (in bloom)
Crossvine (in bloom)
Montezuma Cypress
Monterey Oak
Red Yucca (in bloom)
Twist Leaf Yucca
Manfreda (in bloom)
Gulf Muhly
Lindheimer Muhly
Inland Sea Oats
Blue Eyed Grass (in bloom)
White Coneflower
Purple Coneflower (in bloom)
Cedar Sage
Salvia Cleavelandii
Snake Herb
Red Columbine
Wedelia
Fluttermills
Datura
Texas Betony
Wooly Stemoda
Chocolate Daisy
Texas Rock Rose (in bloom)
Apache Plume (in bloom)
Chili Pequin
Arroyo Sweetwood
Escarpment Cherry

Larger trees and other species are available by request.


The Saturday date was also chosen to go along with our inclusion in the Funky Chicken Coop Tour. (http://austincooptour.org/) Please visit their site


for more information.  This is some of the information provided about the event on their site:

The 6th Annual Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour, April 19, 2014. Begin the day with a stop by Coop Tour Headquarters, at Sunshine Community Gardens in a cooperative arrangement withTexas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 4814 Sunshine Drive, Austin, Texas 78756. The Tour’s coops are open for tour goers from 10:00am-4:00pm. Coop Tour Headquarters will include coop tour and cycling registration, vendors, and a free education center, nestled throughout Sunshine Community Gardens, with their own onsite coop and chickens.
https://www.facebook.com/AustinFunkyChickenCoopTour 
Twitter @afct
Flickr athttp://www.flickr.com/photos/austincooptour

Spring Semester Update

It seems that every semester begins with its own trials and trebulations. Getting back into the routine always takes a little time, especially when extending both personal and work families.

Students are fully engulfed in the final class of the Green Academy and working hard on their independent study projects. They will soon be posting short updates on their progress directly to this blog. We have students working on introducing bees to Small's habitat, protecting Black-Capped Vireos, improving the air quality of the classroom environments, installing native and community gardens in the surrounding neighborhoods, and much more. A group of students are rehabilitating and securing the chicken coop to make it more functional and safe. We plan on being on the Funky Chicken Coop tour later this year.

The main focus of many students' projects is an area of land in the middle of Travis Country neighborhood. The land is near 4800 Trail West. It was originally set aside to be developed into an elementary school. When that did not pan out the land was discussed being developed into housing and other not so favorable outcomes. The land always remained in AISD's hands. When discussion of selling the land came up again, the Green Academy saw the oppotunity to take over maintenance of the land. The plan is to turn the land into an educational preserve because the land contained many geological features, plants, and habitats similar to a primitive Austin habitat before settlement. Students are working to increase the presence of the Greater Roadrunner, Chimney Swifts, Monarch butterflies, Eastern Cottontail, and many native snakes. Other students are removing invasive plants such as Nandina, and controlling the presence of Ash Juniper saplings. We hope this land will be used and improved for generations to come.

The sixth grade classes are just now beginning to understand the importance of garden management and its role in habitat creation. The World Outside class is deep in a biomimcry unit and the Native Plant classes are exploring reptiles and amphibians.

Mr. Brooks' classes are deconstructing keyhole gardens due to rodent issues and reusing the cinder blocks to make a more conventional garden. He is still working to install more rain gardens and is cooperating with the community garden.

Our biggest announcement is that we were approved to interview and hire a new teaching assistant for the Green Academy. In November Carly Surratt joined the Small family. She is orginally from Southeast Texas. She went to school as Texas State University and studied Geography. She has travelled to Ecuador and Colorado to work in a natural educational setting. She has already been a great asset and has allowed us to accomplish many more of our goals. We hope that she will be around for many years to come.

2013 1st 6 Weeks Recap –by Kasi M. and Julia M.

 (Some images have been borrowed from other sites due to technical dificulties)

This year has started off great! The students have already worked on many projects to benefit our school.

A salad bar has been added to our cafeteria. Adding more healthy options in the cafeteria is always a goal of our program. Soon the food in the salad bar will hopefully all be grown in our vegetable gardens. We have expanded our beds to begin this process. Prior to Green Fest we constructed more keyhole gardens. Keyhole gardens allow one person to work a garden more efficiently by allowing them to reach the whole garden without moving. They also have compost added right into the soil, through the middle mesh tube.

Our students raise chickens each year. In previous years we have raised the chicks from only a few days old to egg laying years all in class. This year we purchased chicks from Callahan’s. Ms. Dunaway has taken care of the chicks up to this point at her home. They have recently been brought back to school to get taken care of by students and live in our chicken coup.

We have installed a new rainwater garden. This garden helps catch rain to make sure it is absorbed by the plants instead of the water becoming runoff. Runoff leads to erosion and the loss of valuable topsoil. It has held up to our "mosoonal" downpours.

The north pond that was started last year was finished this year. It has native plants like pink Turk’s cap and has a waterfall. It is also home to  mosquito fish, red eared sliders, and a plethora of insects.

The gardens that were built three years ago using a National Wildlife Foundation grant always need maintenance. This year our benches were beginning to look like they needed some help. We replaced some boards. and we have them a new coat of  green ­­ and purple paint. Go Cougars and Green Tech!

Green Fest was a great success! This festival raised money for upcoming projects by selling native plants, t-shirts, entry fees for all of our awesome activites, and from donations from vendors.  We are going to sell the remaining plants throughout this week ending this Friday, 10/18, at our school.

We are also still selling mulch and Green Fest shirts. Mulch is $4 a yard. Shirts are $10. You can also contact Mr. Rosenberg, nate.rosenberg@austinisd.org, if you would like to come out any purchase any items throughout the week.

Some of the plants we still have are:

·         Esperanza (yellow Bells)

·         Mexican Feather grass (wire grass)

·         Bulbine

·         Red Shrimp Plant

·         Mexican Plum

·         Conoclinium Gregg (small, grey)

·         Black Foot Daisy

·         Palm Lady Tree

·         4 Nerve Daisy

·         Mexican Bush sage (purple)

·         Desert Willow

·         Star Tree Ivy

·         Fall Aster

·         American Beauty Berry

·         Mexican Beauty Berry

·         Mountain Laurel

·         Oxford Pink Salvia

·         Salvia greggi

·         Turks Cap

·         Texas Rock Rose